For Former Tehran Hostages, a Tangle Of Anger at Both Captors and the U.S.

By FELICITY BARRINGER and JOEL BRINKLEY; Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting from San Francisco for this article.

Published: July 2, 2005

For Thomas Schaefer, being held hostage in Iran for 444 days was a transformative experience but largely a solitary one. It was rare for him, a former Air Force attach?to see any of his fellow hostages during captivity, and he saw few afterward.

These days, he said in an interview on Friday, ''there are still about four or five guys I keep in touch with,'' but ''we're scattered around the world.'' Large gatherings or other occasions are rare for the surviving 41 hostages, who were taken captive by Iranian militants in November 1979.

This week, however, was one of those occasions, prompted by the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a student radical at the time of the embassy takeover, as the new president of Iran.

Five of the former hostages, seeing photographs of Mr. Ahmadinejad, said they remembered him as a virulently anti-American figure during the takeover who supervised other militants and urged them to be tougher on captives. The president-elect and former leaders of the hostage takers have denied that he was among the militants.

The memories evoked by that debate have stirred other feelings, too -- including the betrayal felt by some when their lawsuit against Iran's government was blocked by the State and Justice Departments, which argued that compensation would violate the 1981 treaty that was the basis for the hostages' release.

Some of the men who stepped forward this week have incorporated badges of their ordeal into their everyday lives -- for instance, by building e-mail addresses around the number ''444.'' Most of them have also been in the forefront of a series of unsuccessful class-action lawsuits seeking monetary compensation for their ordeal. They remain in close e-mail contact.

Other former captives still work in the diplomatic world, some of them employed by the State Department. They have been more aloof from the disputes over the past, though they are among the 130 people -- former hostages, spouses and children -- who could benefit.

But in public, when controversies like this week's arise, they say nothing against their fellows. Those former hostages who, in interviews, could not corroborate the memories of the five who identified Mr. Ahmadinejad -- Charles Scott, Donald Sharer, William J. Daugherty, Kevin J. Hermening and David M. Roeder -- pointedly did not contradict them.

For example, Richard H. Morefield, the American consul general at the embassy when it was seized, said in a telephone interview from his home in Springfield, Va., that ''it's not surprising that I don't recognize'' the new president as a onetime militant. ''I was not one of those on which they spent a lot of time.''

The publicity about the election energized small, informal networks of former captives. Steven Kirtley, 46, an information systems consultant for a small Washington, D.C., company who was a Marine guard at the embassy, received an e-mail note from another former hostage, Paul Lewis, on Monday or early Tuesday, with a link to a Web site that showed the new president's photograph.

The face looked familiar, he said in an interview, but he could not be sure. ''I can't pin him down to a specific time or place as one of the hostage takers,'' he said.

Another thing that unites the hostages is their refusal to speak for one another. Most were newcomers to the embassy before the takeover; most were held alone or in very small groups. All of the 50 men and 2 women who emerged incorporated the ordeal into their lives differently. Some bonded with one another; many did not.

The ordeal was defining for Mr. Schaefer, the former Air Force attach?who lives in Phoenix. He said he was deeply offended when the State Department stepped in to block the former captives' successful federal lawsuit against Iran in 2001, just as the judge was about to award damages, which would have been paid out of the Iranian government money in American banks that was frozen in 1979.

The State Department has said it was unaware of the lawsuit until a legal officer stumbled upon it just before its scheduled conclusion. Hastily, the department argued that the suit conflicted with the agreement the government made with Iran in 1981 and that neither the courts nor Congress had the right to abrogate international treaties.

In what was known as the Algiers accord, the United States agreed to preclude the prosecution of any claim against Iran arising out of the hostages' seizure and detention.

Several acts of Congress in later years appeared to open the door to lawsuits against Iran despite the agreement. A group of hostages filed a class-action suit in 2000. Then, in 2001, shortly after President Bush took office, the State Department and the Justice Department intervened.

This week, Sean McCormack, the department spokesman, punctuated his comments about the hostages' allegations on Thursday with one expression of concern that caught their attention: ''I do want to say one thing, and that is to underscore the fact that we have not forgotten -- we have not forgotten -- the fact that 51 of our diplomats were held for 444 days, that they were taken hostage.''

Mr. Daugherty, a former hostage, responded Friday: ''Of course they haven't forgotten. They have challenged us at three levels of the federal court system and have challenged every piece of legislation that would allow us to sue Iran or to receive compensation in some way.''

Asked about that, Mr. McCormack simply referred to his statement on Thursday, adding: ''I'm not going to comment. What am I going to say?''

Photos: A former hostage, William J. Daugherty, left, of Savannah, Ga., suspects that the president-elect of Iran was one of his captors in 1979. Thomas Schaefer, of Phoenix, is less certain but has other concerns: that the first suit against Iran by ex-hostages was blocked by the State and Justice Departments. (Photos by Stephen Morton/Associated Press [left]. Michael Ging/The Arizona Republic [right].)